Choosing a Green Energy provider
Green Energy has been getting a lot of press lately - this is where your energy retailer provides you with some or all of your electricity from “green sources”. It typically costs a bit extra, but this hasn’t stopped thousands of people signing up for it.
Its worth doing a bit of research, if you haven’t already signed up. It turns out “green” comes in different shades :). For instance, some electricity companies include electricity sourced from old hydro schemes in their tally - technically this is correct, but it doesn’t provide any incentive or market forces to encourage new sources of green energy.
A useful resource is www.greenelectricitywatch.org.au, which rates the various providers’ schemes. Unfortunately, the website alone doesn’t offer too much explanation about how the ratings were determined. However, if you download the report (the 2006 report is available now, with the 2007 report due out in November), it will take you through the background behind Green Energy, and what makes one provider’s product better than anothers.
And the market isn’t standing still. ActewAGL (the provider I use) used to offer only fixed rate plans under their “GreenChoice” scheme - you could buy a fixed amount of 5 KwH, 10 KwH or 15 KwH of green energy a day, regardless of your use. You can now choose between these fixed plans (which is great if you want to only pay a set price), or a percentage plan, where you choose for a percentage of your usage to come from green sources - 10%, 25%, 50%, 100% and even 200%! That last option can help you compensate for your carbon emissions from other sources, like your car driving, or household purchases.
Its easy to get confused by the range of choices, and the details (do you want power sourced from the wind? From solar?). But there are good resources on the web to help you sort through these issues, and at the end of the day, it has to better to be on any one of the accredited GreenPower schemes, at any level, than to not be on one at all!
Categories: environment, green
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